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“Fine. But I still think you should attack him with your mouth the second you see him.”
“Noted.” I smiled, but knew I would never do it.
Britney frowned at me and let out a sigh. “You won’t do it.”
“You’re right. I won’t.”
She made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and an annoyed huff. “Knowing Frank, he’d probably be turned off if you attacked him. Or it’s exactly what he’s waiting for. I wish he was easier to figure out!”
“You wish?” I let out a laugh. “How do you think I feel?”
“Lucky. Because you like a Fisher brother, and he actually likes you back.”
Her tone wasn’t resentful or angry, but it was tinged with a hint of sadness. It wasn’t easy to forget that the whole reason I’d even met Frank in the first place was because of Britney’s crush on Ryan. I glanced at her, noting she’d turned almost wistful as she looked out the passenger window, and neither of us said anything more.
She was right, though. I was lucky.
And I knew it.
Losing Control
Frank
When Claudia had mentioned coming by the bar again, I couldn’t tell her no.
I’d wanted to.
But I couldn’t.
No, that wasn’t true at all. Because I hadn’t wanted to tell her no; I simply knew that I should have.
Just the idea of seeing her beautiful smile spurred me on. The thought of getting to know her better fueled me. So when Claudia asked if she could stop by the bar after work, my fingers were typing out the hell yes response quicker than my brain could stop them.
I realized in that moment, if I hadn’t realized it before, that my willpower wasn’t strong enough to keep her at a distance, especially when she tried to close it. All my carefully laid-out thoughts and plans halted the second anything with her became a possibility. I tossed everything out the proverbial fucking window the moment I spotted her reflection in it. My heart was in the lead. Or maybe it was my dick? An image of her body sprang to my mind, and I instantly hardened.
Shit.
My brain had definitely gone on hiatus, taken a vacation, filed for an extended leave. And since Nick’s girlfriend, Jess, was sick and he’d asked if he could take the night off to stay with her, Ryan would be here again to witness my failure at keeping my distance from Claudia. So here we were, about to have a repeat of the night before.
“She’s coming in again?” Ryan asked as he mixed a new concoction for me to try.
I’d given him a heads-up about Claudia so he wouldn’t be surprised. Or maybe I’d simply wanted him to know. Either way, I’d filled him in.
I nodded and waited for him to finish my drink. He topped it off with a spritz of something, then zested an orange and ran the peel along the rim of the glass before sliding it over.
Breathing in the citrus mixed with whiskey, I was intoxicated. It smelled amazing but tasted even better. “I don’t know how the hell you do this. You have a gift.”
“It’s good, right?”
“It’s really fucking good.”
Ryan grinned. He scribbled a note into his Moleskin before folding it and tucking it into his back pocket. “I can’t believe she’s coming here again.”
I didn’t really want to talk about Claudia, about my fucked-up priorities and decision-making skills since meeting her. We’d already said everything there was to say last night. My telling him before she arrived tonight had been a courtesy. Or a warning.
“You’re going to get in trouble. Seriously, how long do you think you can put off kissing a woman like that?”
It wasn’t as if those thoughts didn’t run through my mind constantly. They did. I imagined her long, lean legs and all the ways I could wrap them around my body as I slid inside her. I wanted to plant kisses all over her tanned skin as I made her moan my name over and over again.
